Page 24 of Shadowed Summer Sun

Someone wanted to cause harm, harm beyond measure, and cycle be damned for the process. Someone greedy and educated in the Old Ways.

“Moira.”

Chapter Ten

Always Exit Through The Same Door You Entered.

Moira’sattacksonOldBetty had been the start, but her destructive efforts had reached new heights. She had been one of our own, and now she not only continued to abuse her magic but also pulled forth a terrible force that had broken the natural cycle.She did this.

“Badb!” I called, and my crow quickly descended onto my horn and cawed.

“Mistress, is it her?”she spoke into my mind.

“Yes.” A rage of my own churned in my gut. “How did we not see her dealings?! How could the Coven be caughtthisunaware?”

The vines around my body coiled and twisted, snapping out randomly as my anger bubbled.

“I sense a cloaking, obscuring her from view. The Taking must have found its mate in her and gave her gifts.”

I growled low, scanning the Vinemire Forest around me and sensing the dozens more husks she’d created in the time I’d been away.

“Where is she? Where have they gone for their next respelling?” I growled.

Power thrummed through my eyes as I bid Badb to the sky. I looked through her vision as she coasted over the edge of the woods and toward the county line.

We sensed nothing but lingering pain as the trees and beasts were attacked by the Taking’s tumorous spread. Imparting in Badb the instructions to turn back the other way, a stab of terror flooded my veins. What had she passed over?

Looking down through the trees through Badb, my heart sank. The Coven house was beneath her flight, a black aura choking the structure and trapping its inhabitants. Shrouded in a cloud of hatred, a prominent figure stood before the building.My home, my family.

Roaring out into the fields, I pulled in the shadows surrounding me, sucking them into my body like a tangible mist, and used them to fling myself to the house. I appeared before Moira, or what she’d become, and screamed into her essence. Still invisible behind her protective conjuration, my magic sliced at the force and tore through the Darkness surrounding the Coven house.

Time hung in a frozen inhale as I took in the destruction surrounding my home. Five husks littered the grass of the front yard, stuck in a terrible rigor that locked in their last moment of fear.

Appearing before the steps, I knelt down and found Ravena and Sandra clutching hands as they attempted to protect the house. Ravena’s cat familiar sat mummified at her feet. Their souls were trapped as their bodies blackened and were reduced to hollow bags of bones.

David, our Brother of Alchemy and a master of herbs, crumbled at the door to the greenhouse, having just exited and found his destruction. Sam, our Sibling of Water, was a few feet in front of another husk, struck down as they attempted to shield someone.

Raging black shadows thundered out of me like torrential waves as I took in the husk behind Sam.

“Betty,” I spoke through nails that tore into my throat.

Black licked up her body, sucking her life away and stealing both soul and flesh. Falling to my knees, I attempted to pull it from her, stop its horrid progression and secure her a place in the cycle. Betty’s single yellow eye cracked open.

“I should have said something. Heeded the dreams. I am no great priestess. I have failed you.” Her voice was half a whisper and choked with blood.

I snapped my eyes to hers, tears of night sliding down my cheeks and landing on her face.

“You have not. The Taking is beyond this world.” I sucked in a breath, fighting the evil ravishing her.

“Don’t waste your strength on Old Betty. Protect them. Protect them like I couldn’t.”

Betty shoved my hands away, breaking my concentration. The Taking slurped her up as its tentacles of rot slithered back toward the cloud around Moira. I squeezed my eyes shut. Betty was gone, and so many others. Badb landed near me, having stayed aloft until now.

“Mistress, I’m sorry.”She cawed, full of sorrow, but then lifted her head to me.“Moira has changed.”

I looked into Badb’s black eyes, a spear plunged through my heart, each movement a torture. “It has paired with her. She is not what she was.”

The sound of tearing skin boomed through the fields around the Coven house, and I spun to face the shrouded mass behind me.

---